Heroic Self-Deprecation

"But I am a worm and not a man. I am scorned and despised by all!"

— King David of Israel, Psalms 22:6, The Bible

You'd think that saving the world — especially on a semi-regular basis, as some heroes do — would give your sense of self-worth a bit of a boost, if not cause some serious ego issues. The parades and statues in your honor, the best-selling biography by your most ardent fan (Monster Slaying and Other Handy Household Hints), the town hall getting renamed after you... Surely you don't need anyone else to tell you how special you are.

Well, not if the hero who engages in Heroic Self-Deprecation is anything to go by.

No matter how much they do for the world or what their loyal friends tell them, this hero is still incapable of believing that they're anything more than useless. Every little mistake leads to a massive display about how it's all their fault and how they're just not good enough. Praise may lead only to Dismissing a Compliment. They're trying to be a Humble Hero, but they're going too far. Sometimes, going way too far.

It doesn't matter how many lives they've saved, worlds they've rescued, or bad guys they've defeated — their self-esteem remains in negative figures, and they'll still have a periodic Heroic BSoD, rendered useless until someone can snap them out of it by telling them they're wonderful. And someone will. Because for every hero with terrible self-esteem, there's a group of True Companions on standby to give them encouraging words and speeches, usually with at least one Get a Hold of Yourself, Man!. Magical Girls especially are prone to giving speeches of thanks after this happens: she repays her squad by crediting her success to the supportive words of her friends and love interest.

While not always a bad thing, this can get rather irritating if done too often or to an extreme degree, especially if the hero's exploits are so grandiose that nobody could fail to realize that they are A Very Important Person. Sometimes writers feel they're in a bind; wanting their hero to be modest but also wanting the audience to realize they're amazing. So they have the hero put themselves down incessantly to avoid bragging while having the Greek Chorus of their friends reminding us that just because they don't brag about it doesn't mean that they're not the best thing since sliced bread. This unfortunately breaks the Show, Don't Tell rule, which doesn't sit well with people. Especially if this trope is done so badly it veers into Wangst territory. However, this trope is quite more common in cynical settings, since bragging a character's heroic deeds can be considered Too Good for This Sinful Earth.

In Ancient Greece the opposite was true; a real hero acknowledged his triumphs and was expected to boast about anything he had really done. As long as you avoided hubris, this was fine; it showed generosity of spirit.

While this trope tends to be associated with female characters, there are enough male examples so that it is not Always Female. Children and teenagers can be prone to this if they're thrown in at the deep end early in life, but young boys are more likely to be given a storyline where they get big-headed and have to be brought down to earth. Adult males are not immune, either; while bragging might be seen as less of a sin for men, and reversing it as less necessary, there will still be a few authors who use modesty as a virtue and go a bit too far.

Contrast Think Nothing of It, which is reasonable self-deprecation, and Dude, Where's My Respect?, where a character with a lot of accomplishments is belittled by other people instead of by themself. If this mood is just a one-off thing for a character, then it is You Are Better Than You Think You Are. Contrast also Inferiority Superiority Complex (for someone who acts tough but is revealed to have low self-esteem beneath all that), as well as pure Superiority Complexes: Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy, Insufferable Genius, Smug Super, and Knight Templar.

Very much Truth in Television. Many great leaders and thinkers have suffered from depression, resulting in this exact symptom.

Not to be confused with Self-Deprecation, which is just cracking jokes. For characters who repeatedly put themselves down without being epic heroes, see Chronic Self-Deprecation. See also "The Reason You Suck" Speech, Driven by Envy.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• In Akame ga Kill! Leone once outright tells Tatsumi that they aren't heroes, they're killers. The main thing that might qualify them as heroes is that the people they kill are far worse than they are.
• Edward Elric from Fullmetal Alchemist easily qualifies. He's a child genius, one of the youngest and greatest alchemists ever to exist, but he blames himself for the loss of Alphonse's body, and at the end of the series is still beating himself up over Nina being turned into a chimera by her father, despite having saved countless other people along the way.
• Happy Kanako’s Killer Life: Kanako is utterly devoid of self-esteem. When she runs into and goes drinking with an old classmate from middle school, she spends the whole time internally lamenting her own sense of comparative uselessness and is surprised that the acquaintance actually isn’t annoyed by her. Her craving for validation is part of why she desperately wants to continue her assassin job.
• This is a common theme in The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (2016).
  • Link responds badly when Faron calls him "the hero chosen by the gods", citing his failure to protect his hometown or Ordon Village. Unfortunately, getting the Master Sword later on causes him to go to the opposite extreme, at least until he loses against Dark Link.
  • When Link and Midna are able to bring his hometown from the Twilight Realm back to Hyrule, Darpa takes issue with him being the Chosen Hero as well saving their town by simply pulling out Gaurof's Sword, and accues Link of thinking his fellow trainees as hindrances. Link frustratingly responds that he'd find his friends as "hindrances" only because he'd have to worry about protecting them, that he never wanted the role in the first place, never mind bearing the Triforce's mark, but he's reconciled with himself over having to bear the Triforce and needing to defeat Ganondorf.
• Takiko Okuda from Fushigi Yuugi: Genbu Kaiden has always seen herself as a weak, good-for-nothing girl, who was incapable of being remotely any help to the people closest to her, lamenting that she could not help her sick mother and never managed to really get to know her father. Even when she becomes the Priestess of Genbu and helps the warriors feel accepted and alright with their fate as her warriors, she still thinks she can't do much. This is said to be one reason why Genbu had such an easy time devouring her.
• Maya Kitajima from Glass Mask sees herself as plain-looking, boring, clumsy, and good for nothing.
  • It helps that her mother kept telling her that, too, until she died, realizing what a great kid Maya was, after all.
• Elfen Lied: Lucy constantly puts herself down, because she was left alone at a young age and tormented in an orphanage by the other children for being "different." Later, she meets Kouta, and for the first time in her life, she feels loved, only to kill his dad and sister when she thinks that he betrays her. She then realizes her mistake when she sees how upset Kouta is, feels immense guilt, and only keeps herself alive so that she can someday meet Kouta again and apologize to him.
• Tsuna Sawada from Reborn! (2004). Gets called "No-Good Tsuna" by his peers for his poor grades, athletic and social skills and doesn't exactly discourage these remarks directed towards him, even though, through Character Development, he's become stronger, less of a wimp, and more able to protect his "family". In the beginning, he was also more likely to insist that he wasn't capable to do anything mafia-wise without Reborn's help. However, it's also something that pisses Reborn off immensely and is shown as something he'll have to get over eventually. So when Tsuna demonstrates even a tiny bit of self-confidence, Reborn regards it as a vast improvement.
  • To be fair, Tsuna still is a no-good bump on a log unless he's in Dying Will mode, which despite apparently being offscreen and instant now, still requires either pills or a bullet to the noggin.
  • Enma Kozato even more so. It's partly because of this that the two end up becoming fast friends because they finally found someone they can relate to in this regard.
• In Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, Zenitsu harbors some deep self-esteem issues from his past where he quite never found a group of friends he truly belonged to. Feeling he was useless and then getting called as such after being abandoned by past acquaintances, Zenitsu started to believe he really doesn’t amount to anything as a person and only kept taking the path of the sword out of respect for his master and the waning hope that maybe someday someone will see him as their hero.
• The titular character of Sailor Moon is expected to carry the weight on the world on her shoulders, both as the leader of the Sailor Scouts and the woman who will become Queen one day. All of the pressures, sacrifices, and stress of having to constantly battle the forces of darkness, while at the same time being unable to save every innocent person or even make a meaningful dent in the dark entities that threaten Earth, weighs heavily on Usagi. At one point, she declares that I Just Want to Be Normal and tries to walk away from being Sailor Moon anymore, but she finds that it's not that easy after her loved ones keep being put in danger. It's somewhat balanced out by the other cast members criticizing and pointing out her faults, especially early on — Usagi is an Idiot Hero of the first order, she's flaky and keeps forgetting her prior engagements, and she's also something of a crybaby. Even so, after going up against Reality Warpers and Eldritch Abominations that want to cause The End of the World as We Know It, Usagi still doesn't think of herself as anything special, or at least nowhere near good enough to be the kind of person that acts as The Hero.
• Puella Magi Madoka Magica:
  • The titular character has a bad case of this, as she is seen berating herself for being a weak coward for her reluctance to become a Magical Girl the day after seeing one get devoured in battle. It was enough to drive the normally unemotional Homura to tears. She follows a group of people she realizes has been mind-controlled by one of the Witches Magical Girls fight and saves them when they are compelled to commit mass suicide that evening. She sees no contradiction.
  • Homura has it worse than Madoka in this regard, as shown in Puella Magi Madoka Magica The Movie: Rebellion. Between her inner monologues and the harrowing imagery of her Witch Labyrinth, it's clear Homura sees nothing in herself worth liking.
• Sora Naegino in Kaleido Star has defied several laws of basic physics in some of her stunts, but constantly angsts (and sometimes downright wangsts) that she's not good enough to be a true Kaleido Star, that she'll never be as good as Miss Layla Hamilton, and that maybe her dream is too far out of her reach to achieve. Cue Mia, Anna, Ken, and Marion breaking out the cheerleading gear to reassure her that she can defy gravity (again) if she puts her mind to it.
• Tohru Honda in Fruits Basket maintains that she's weak and useless even as the various Zodiac Sohmas make their way over to meet her and be healed by her universal love. They keep pretty quiet about Tohru's importance to them until fairly late in the story... to Tohru at least. They're always telling each other how wonderful she is, but they don't really inform Tohru of her own importance until the end.
• Cardcaptor Sakura:
  • The title character manages to do a low-key version of this without the Heroic BSoD.
  • Meiling also uses a milder version of this on occasions where she becomes The Load, due to her inferiority complex toward Sakura.
• Himeno of Prétear keeps dwelling on her "coarse" and "unladylike" nature, especially in the manga. You'd think she'd realize that, given the circumstances, martial arts are a lot more useful than flower arranging. Not to worry; her Seven Knights Of Leafe are there to cheer her on. Or, in Hayate's case, make snide comments until she's forced to get angry.
• Ayumu from Spiral angsts that he's nothing but a poor man's version of his older brother constantly, to the point that, every single time he wins a game of wits (and we're talking about an anime where Gambit Roulettes are the height of Serious Business, so you know he gets into them a lot), he mopes that his brother would have won better.
  • It doesn't help that everyone is always waffling about how awesome Kiyotaka is. Ayumu's last Moment of Awesome is when he decides he doesn't care anymore and his brother can screw himself.
• Judai, The Ace and Messianic Archetype of Yu-Gi-Oh! GX. Human beings really aren't cut out to be this archetype, especially a teenage boy: the pressure gets to him, giving birth to his Superpowered Evil Side.
• Yumi Fukuzawa from Maria Watches Over Us is the petite soeur of the most popular girl at her school, who actually chases after her to make it happen. She is also highly respected (e.g. fawned over) by the members of the school's Absurdly Powerful Student Council and gets a declaration of love from one the coolest girls in the series. Still, she keeps up a very self-berating attitude, although she does lighten up a bit as the series progresses.
• Naruto:
  • Naruto Uzumaki constantly beats himself up if he feels he's being "weak". For a large part of the series, he especially can't stand the fact that he hasn't been able to redeem his friend, Sasuke. Before the Chunin exams finals, Naruto privately admitted to Hinata that he viewed himself as a loser and tried to act cool and brash to cope with this. It doesn't help that Naruto's self-worth was already frighteningly low, being a Stepford Smiler from the very beginning. His childhood consisted of him being ostracized, hated, and psychologically crippled by the extensive fear and loathing pushed onto him by his village. His self-confidence has gotten better over the course of the series, but it is still pretty damn fragile, and the only way he can function is by being a Determinator and using sheer willpower to push forward, even when his opinion of himself is horrible. Sasuke certainly doesn't help, as he continuously keeps grinding Naruto's self-esteem further into the dust every time they meet. His insecurities are at such a level that he couldn't even imagine the idea of there being someone who would love him unconditionally, hence it took him several years to notice the Unresolved Sexual Tension between him and Hinata.
  • Sakura Haruno many times calls herself "useless" for being unable to turn the guy she is in love with -Sasuke- to the light side, and despite receiving training from the legendary kunoichi and Fifth Hokage, Tsunade, she still sometimes feels she Can't Catch Up to the boys of her team.
  • Sasuke probably attacks Naruto's self-esteem because his own swings wildly between pitifully low to insanely high due to his Inferiority Superiority Complex. When Sasuke was an actual hero, he felt he couldn't live up to his older brother's status as the Uchiha clan prodigy; after the brother killed the entire clan -the entire clan save Sasuke, which constituted Konoha's entire police force and many highly trained shinobi-, Sasuke blamed himself for not being strong enough to avenge them, and made very bad choices in order to gain power to defeat Itachi. During his time with Team 7, Sasuke was considered the best genin of his graduating class with good reason and yet was disappointed with himself for not being able to defeat opponents with much more experience than he possessed, like Haku and Itachi. In short, a lot of Sasuke's problems are because he can't stop raging on himself for his perceived flaws (while, arguably, not dealing with his real flaws).
  • Hinata Hyuga, largely because of her insecurity, as shown with her thinking she's useless in Chapter 559, and she also calls herself "selfish" when she can't stand doing nothing and rushes Pain in a desperate attempt to save Naruto, and when she confides with Naruto that she feels she is not doing enough for finding her kidnapped younger sister Hanabi in The Last: Naruto the Movie.
  • Jiraiya has this near-pathologically, as even in his last moments, he believes that his life was a complete waste and that he was a loser. His only goal in life was to have an awesome death. He managed it.
  • It's revealed that Kakashi also suffers from this: he calls himself trash when talking to Obito. After losing his original team in a span of a year, Kakashi was on the verge of the Despair Event Horizon, and it took a lot of time and support to move on from their deaths. Team 7 helped, but after Sasuke's departure, Kakashi's guilt reared its head. Learning that his best friend Obito, his idol and hero and the person who Kakashi has modeled his entire life after, is responsible for nearly every tragedy that has befallen him over the years, starting with their teacher's death, all but broke him completely — the amount of self-hatred he felt after that revelation was almost insurmountable.
• Neon Genesis Evangelion:
  • Shinji Ikari maintains his crushing self-esteem issues despite saving everyone in the world on a regular basis. Though it understandably gets much worse when everything goes to hell. It Runs in the Family as part of the many ways he's like his dad.
    • Justified by the fact that Shinji is still a vulnerable teenager, his mother died when he was young, his father is neglectful, and the amount of shit that he goes through due to the strain of saving the world. Unfortunately, the fanbase continues to view Shinji as a complete pussy nonetheless.
  • Asuka as well. Although she tries very hard to hide it by constantly acting confident, deep down she's a massive self-hating mess who is desperate for praise and validation from others.
  • In a large moment of being similar, Gendo Ikari is very much like this. It's implied he grew up in an unloving home with Yui Ikari being the light of his life when he married her. Upon her death, he became a wrecked man. Rather than falling into the usual self-loathing, he channeled it into his plan to end the suffering he was forced to endure due to his humanity. Furthermore, he tried to distance himself from Shinji because he was afraid he would hurt his son. Ironically, this would be indeed how he would hurt his son, something he painfully acknowledges right before he dies. Like Father, Like Son, indeed.
  • Although he doesn't show it, it's revealed in an artbook (and in the manga version) that Kaji is a self-hating mess. In the manga, he describes himself as "someone who does not deserve to be happy" (which is the reason for his extremely dysfunctional relationship with Misato). Perhaps because of this, he tries his best to help out Shinji.
• The Prince of Tennis: Out of the Seigaku boys, Takashi Kawamura is the one who took the most time to reach the top (in the manga, he became a regular only in his senior year) and was bullied as a freshman by his sempai because he had problems with his Super-Strength, so he's got a pathological case of self-deprecation unless he takes his racket and his sort-of Split Personality emerges. Even then, Kawamura's issues make him an uber example of the Determinator because he thinks that he's gotta prove to everyone that he's not The Load in Seigaku (even when his teammates, Tezuka included, have told him that he's no load).
  • Another (more subtle) example is Team Mom Shuuichirou Oishi, who has given up his place in the regulars row temporarily more than once, was quite peeved in the anime for his Game-Breaking Injury, and almost caused his partner and close friend Eiji an Heroic BSoD when he let Tezuka (manga) or Ryoma (anime) take his place right before the Nationals
• Francis Harcourt of Ashita no Nadja, after his very serious and very hidden self-esteem problems are revealed.
• Negima! Magister Negi Magi:
  • Negi Springfield is so prone to this that it eventually became a fighting style for him, throwing punches while yelling out "I'm worthless!" to get his mood in the right place to use Black Magic. He once confronted the idea that all his abilities and accomplishments are front to let him run away. Another character reminded him that all his power, however it was gained or for what reason is his own to be proud of. He still occasionally falls into self-martyring and blame-taking, with some Survivor's Guilt to boot.
  • Setsuna also gets some bouts of this after Tsukuyomi nearly defeats her. Humorously, while she rants about how weak she is, she saves herself and Konoka from a giant iron ball on a reflex without even noticing that she did so.
• The Twelve Kingdoms: Youko:"I'm such an useless queen!" This is after she had to fight her way to that position.
• Haruto Sakuraba from Eyeshield 21 is initially ashamed of being built up by the media as the Ojou White Knights' ace, when he considers himself a mediocre athlete who can't compare to the White Knight's real ace, Seijuro Shin. He eventually gets over this, however, and becomes a great receiver who takes advantage of his height.
• Hayate the Combat Butler. The poor boy's been under the impression he's going to someday receive some horrible punishment just for having yelled at Athena when she was trying to kill him. He believes that everyone hates him, except children, though he doesn't think of children as being anything other than friends. He also doesn't feel that he's worthy of having an Unwanted Harem of gorgeous girls who worship the ground he walks on, due to what happened with Athena.
  • Actually, Hayate doesn't feel he deserves to have a girlfriend because he can't financially support her...which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Albeit, this WAS beaten into his head by Athena, so it still counts. And ironically, she did it so that he would become independent from his parents, and agree to live with her, since the alternative to staying in her castle was rather terrifying, and she did condemn his naivety towards his parents. Overall, it's a cryptic Training from Hell version of I Want My Beloved to Be Happy.
  • Hinagiku also seems to be falling into this trope often in later chapters, usually in regard to her affections towards Hayate.
  • Most of the other characters get their own chances at it, though except for the above two, they're rather well solved by the time the next story arc comes around.
• Yukinari Sasaki from Girls Bravo does this often. It's one of the reasons he was bullied/beat up by girls for most of his young life because he would frequently blame himself and was "too much of a coward to talk back!"
• Yura from Honey Hunt engages in this often, maintaining that she's "not beautiful" despite being very pretty when she fixes herself up and that she's not cut out to be an actress. She also tends to blame herself whenever things go wrong, claiming that she's just being a burden on others and that she's "just no good".
• Durarara!!:
  • Anri Sonohara considers herself to be a parasite because she depends so much on others. She also considers herself a monster because of Saika.
  • Shizuo, the bartender who is prone to massive fits of rage that reach Charles Atlas Superpower levels also counts. Aside from Izaya's constant teasing, he talks down on himself for being so violent and loathing, because he believes that he has no reason to be. True in form, he had a loving family and a normal, happy life, until one day in third grade, when he was provoked...
  • Also, Shizuo's issues with anger and being unable to control himself have ruined his self-esteem. It's bad enough that when Saika declares its love for him, he responds mostly with confusion — because he can't imagine why someone could love him.
• Shina Dark: Both Christina and Galett have crushing self-esteem issues. Galett's are just better hidden behind her Action Girl facade.
• Miranda Lotto of D.Gray-Man often feels inferior and useless, partially because she was fired from all one hundred jobs she previously tried to work. This is mostly Played for Laughs though. It gets Played for Drama later on, though. Since her Healing Hands doesn't actually heals, just restores it to a previous state while active, anyone that receives fatal wounds will die once she turns off her Innocence. She loathes herself due to not being able to properly save anyone, and at one time she would rather die from exhaustion by keeping her Innocence active rather than turning off her Innocence and letting people die.
  • A proper example would be Lenalee, who, even though she´s a Stepford Smiler who would do anything for her True Companions, hates herself for not caring as much as she should about people she doesn´t know.
• Shy: The titular heroine has low self-esteem to begin with, but after she fails to save a girl during an accident and the public and media blame her for it, she falls into a Heroic BSoD and wishes there would be someone else who could do her job. After getting some advice from the other heroes and taking a level in badass she gets better but is still hesitant to take credit for her actions.
• Soul Eater: During the Salvage arc, as she ends in the Chapter of Envy of the Book of Eibon it is revealed that Maka has a LOT of secret insecurities about her strength as a meister.Something of a Tear Jerker in how it came about, illustrated by her seeming inability to pull off one of her signature moves, and coming after a period of poor Maka having gained much greater confidence and increased ability in the areas which troubled her earlier on; see how she handles both Arachne and Gopher. In later chapters of the Book of Eibon, her entire already fragile base of self-esteem slowly gets bashed to pieces. What self-confidence she had takes a nose-dive, and it's very worrying considering it was never very substantial to begin with.
• Albert of Gankutsuou does this at times.
• Yuki of Betrayal Knows My Name. Even though he can read people's minds by touching them to find out what's bothering them, heals people's injuries by taking on their pain, and wants to help people, he tends to put himself down. "I was abandoned when I was born and hated for my strange powers. Hurting others...I'm completely unwanted, without a place anywhere! Why was I even born? Why? I'm not..." and "I always have to be saved by Luka. I'm powerless to do anything!"
  • Also, Kuroto once stated "I have caused great unhappiness for both of the people who saved me from solitude and gave me a home. That's why I don't deserve to be happy."
• If you took a drink every time Ahiru laments in Princess Tutu that she's "just a duck", you'd probably have liver poisoning before you even finished the series.
• Quatre Raberba Winner from Mobile Suit Gundam Wing, specially in his backstory.
  Duo: If you leave him alone too long, Quatre always takes the blame himself for everything. I wouldn't be surprised if one day he starts saying his 'lack of effort' is the reason there's no air in outer space.
• Lyrical Nanoha:
  • Teana Lanster had a really bad inferiority complex in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS. Despite being The Leader of the Forwards, she views herself as an ordinary member in comparison to the powerful or talented members of Riot Force Six. She just wants to be special and starts to train herself harder than she already does to become stronger and she seriously attacks Nanoha during a training match, which backfires hard. Nanoha gives her a "You Are Better Than You Think You Are" speech, but Teana starts to look down at herself again when she is facing three Numbers at once and has an injured leg, but she gets quickly over it. Since StrikerS Sound Stage X, she has embraced her own talents and strength.
  • A minor example is Sister Schach, who is an AAA+ knight and Signum's sparring partner, but does not view herself highly.
  • Voltz Stan, Subaru's commander in StrikerS Sound Stage X. He's the head of the Emergency Services and a well-known hero for his actions during the massive airport fire. He also sees himself as completely useless since those actions led to him being injured to the point of being unable to continue operating on the front lines and he failed to save more people than he had already.
  • Vivio Takamachi is the Clone Jesus of a Crystal Dragon Jesus and she is highly respected by the Church and the descendants of Ancient Belkan Era people, but she views herself as an ordinary girl and prefers it that way.
• Daisuke of D.N.Angel sometimes does this. "Without Dark I'm no good at all. No good..."
• Abel Nightroad of Trinity Blood lapses into this kind of behavior pretty damn often. Every major arc involves at least one scene where he considers himself a worthless, monstrous sinner.
• Mobile Suit Gundam SEED & Mobile Suit Gundam Seed Destiny: Kira Yamato and Athrun Zala are the two best pilots in the series, a pair of Ace Pilot One Man Armies who pilot Weapons of Mass Destruction and make it look easy. Yet they cannot live up to their own standards, constantly blame themselves for not being able to save everybody, and in Athrun's case, descend into full-on Broken Ace by the time Seed Destiny rolls around.
• While he doesn't tend to voice his concerns, Tiger & Bunny hints (and Word of God confirms) that Kotetsu has more than a few self-confidence issues. This is especially the case for the second half of the series, where the gradual loss of his powers brings up fears that he'll only become a deadweight holding Barnaby back.
• Love Pistols: Shirou has horribly low self-esteem.
• Wakaba Shinohara in Revolutionary Girl Utena seems effervescently bubbly, energetic, and perky... until during the Black Rose Arc, we find that she deeply resents people who are special, having a rather low sense of self-worth herself. Shiori Takatsuki (looks sweet and gentle and demure, but is very malicious and has horrible self-esteem since her "best friend" Juri is a beautiful and strong Lady of War) also counts.
• Hino of La Corda d'Oro sometimes does this during her Break the Cutie phase.
• Penguindrum: In Episode 14 a mentally-broken Yuri drugs up Ringo, strips both of them naked, and then tries to rape her, while mentally repeating how much she hates herself due to her body issues and loneliness.
• After a lifetime of neglect and harassment, the eponymous Natsume of Natsume's Book of Friends has come to see his existence as an inconvenience to the people around him, and thus is very reluctant to ask for help or do anything he thinks might trouble people.
• Gilbert of PandoraHearts often acts like this in regards to Oz his master.
  • It's later revealed that Oz himself has a severe case of this.
• Yukiteru of Future Diary often stated "I know I'm pathetic! I know it! But...I'm weak!" before taking a level in badass.
• Perona of One Piece has forcing this on people as a power. It makes her Nigh-Unstoppable until she faces Usopp, who lives and breathes this trope.
• In Maoyu, everyone praises Yuusha as the World's Strongest Man, but he's secretly sad and considers everyone else to be better than him. This is because his incredible strength and fighting skills are useless in the fields of economics and politics, which are the real cornerstones of power in this world. He's Book Dumb, the others aren't.
• The Kyoto arc of Blue Exorcist showed Shiemi slipping into this. Considering she's something of a fragile flower who didn't have any friends due to first being rather sickly, and then having her legs cursed by a demon, it led to her seeing herself as weak and a burden; the reality is that she's probably the second strongest of the Cram Students and most her problems are easily handled by Character Development.
  • And then there is the strongest Cram Student himself; Okumura Rin, who also does this to himself. Considering the fact he's the Son of Satan, has been locked out of the loop most of his life, his awakening involved him trying (and failing) to save his foster father from his blood father's possession, is hated for being said demon's son and has to constantly struggle in his classes, we can't really blame him. It's almost a relief in fact; generally he's such a Grade A Stepford Smiler it's kinda freaky.
• In A Certain Magical Index, Touma Kamijou is one of the most powerful characters in the series with an ability that lets him challenge gods and has saved the world several times over, but he doesn't see himself as anything special. He has no desire to correct the misconception that he is a mere Level 0, and freely admits that everyone else can do things that he cannot.
• Taishi of Servant × Service has a poor opinion of his abilities, and by Episode 3, he actually views Lucy and Yutaka — both newcomers, even — as superior to himself. This is in fact the main barrier between him and Chihaya, as he still thinks he's not good enough for her.
• Gohan from Dragon Ball Z shows hints of this in the Cell Arc, berating himself for his docile nature. In the end, he berates himself for not finishing off Cell earlier like Goku told him to do. However, after Cell comes back to life and Gohan has a final showdown with him, Goku tells him to stop attacking himself, and pushes him to beat Cell.
• High School D×D: Considering their dark and troubled pasts, or previous actions almost everyone on the Occult Research Club has had a moment like this. Out of all of them the most surprising was Issei, where it is revealed in Vol. 20 that he has been suffering from almost depression levels of self-esteem issues since childhood when he borrowed his father's fishing rod without permission and it broke leaving Issei to take the blame for himself without telling him and questioning his worth as his parents' child. It also shows that while he genuinely is a breast man, by thinking of them near constantly he was able to keep his depression and self-worth in check, Raynare's actions washed that away like a sand wall to a tsunami.
• Kaneki of Tokyo Ghoul frequently abuses himself in this manner if he feels he is being weak, repeatedly berating himself for either hurting others or failing to save anyone.
• Mika of Seraph of the End dislikes himself as both a human and a vampire saying he's "a failure as a human" and "nothing but a filthy bloodsucker". This is partly because he blames himself for what happened to his and Yuu's family when they were younger and being unable to save them. Yuu has to do his best to inform him this isn't the case.
  • When Crowley was human, following surviving the war, he gave up faith in God and would frequently comment that his other comrades are better men than he will ever be.
  • Guren comments in the novels that he's just a "lowly Ichinose mongrel".
• Canada of Hetalia: Axis Powers frequently laments that he is ignored by the others even by his own talking stuffed bear. He wonders if he would gain more attention in chapter 278 if he were to act more like America. He states that unlike him, America is good-looking and a skilled speaker. He makes himself feel bad when thinking this way and his bear thinks "The real problem with him is that he's too self-deprecating..."
• Tsukimi of Princess Jellyfish. It's part of the reason she doesn't put effort into her appearance and she considers herself "gross". Kuranosuke and the audience think differently, however. She's so convinced that no one could ever be attracted to her that she goes out of her way to misinterpret even the most straightforward indications of love such as Shuu saying "I like you" or President Kai's kiss.
• Yuuri Katsuki from Yuri!!! on Ice refers to himself as a "dime-a-dozen" skater in the first episode, but, if you pause while he mentions this, the website containing his profile reveals that Yuuri is the poster boy for Japanese men's figure skating, and he is the top-ranked Japanese skater shown in the series. In general, he doesn't even necessarily see himself as an interesting or likable person, and for a while is oblivious to the fact that his idol is desperately in love with him and everyone around him does admire and respect him.
• Leo Cornelia of How to Treat a Lady Knight Right is the most badass woman in her kingdom and, in that respect, she has total confidence in herself. In every other aspect, however, she falters. When Houli confesses to her at the start of the story, she decries her own lack of feminine qualities to shoo him off and is shown to be self-conscious about her scars. Much of the story revolves around her learning how to cope with life outside of battle, whether it be her developing relationship with Houli or just learning to enjoy sweets and spending time with friends.
• Izuku Midoriya from My Hero Academia has this to the point where fans have wondered whether he suffers from Impostor Syndrome. He never seems to consider himself a true hero or a worthy successor to All Might, no matter how many people he saves, and part of the reason he's so willing to break his body to use his quirk is that he genuinely considers himself as less important than his peers. His self-esteem problems stem from the vicious bullying he received all his life for being Quirkless, which internalized the notion that he was worth less than his peers and not able to accomplish anything.
• Banished from the Hero's Party: Gideon takes the Humble Hero to the extreme. As his Blessing does not allow him to grow uniquely, he only can acquire common skills, which is why he does not see himself as anything special and expects to eventually be left behind. When Ares dismisses him as The Load, he took it to heart without consulting the rest of the party, who would have instead paid him the respect he deserved and pointed out that his strategic, logistical, and social skills are just as valuable to the war effort.
• In Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury, despite having a catchphrase urging her to keep going forward and earn her victories, Suletta Mercury has a problem dealing with people not needing her. In episodes 10 and 11, a few innocent acts by the Earth House seemingly convinced Suletta they needed her no more and it took Miorine to hunt her down and fix things up. Even worse, if something does go wrong, she will blame herself when it wasn’t even her fault, such as episode 17, where Miorine tells her she shut down Aerial so she could lose and Suletta responds by apologizing for her loss and begging for another try.

Comic Books

• Astro City: As a Deconstruction of a Cape: Samaritan, meaning it's a bit hard to get through dinner with him without hearing him complain.
• Batman: Several of Batman's allies have come to the conclusion that Bruce Wayne feels that he doesn't deserve to be happy. Even years later, Bruce still feels that the death of his parents was his own fault for wanting to see a movie. This in spite of reducing crime in Gotham, being a founding member of the Justice League, and saving all of reality at least once.
  • His adopted daughter Cassandra Cain may outdo him in this department. She's an All-Loving Hero who believes that everyone has good in them - everyone except herself, that is. She blames herself for anyone who gets hurt around her and has never truly forgiven herself for killing a man at the age of eight, despite the fact that she didn't even know what death was at the time. Somewhat deconstructed in that this comes from serious PTSD and depression, and has led to her attempting suicide at least twice.
• Empowered: The series eats this trope for breakfast, with a title character who thinks she's a significantly worse superhero than she actually turns out to be. Making it worse is that her suit is implied to be as tough as her self-confidence- and with that in the gutter, it actually significantly hurts her power, putting herself in danger until she can get over her mental hang-ups.
  • The character of MindF**k from the same series is a different example of this, in that she views herself as being less purely good than she actually is because she had to Mind Rape herself into becoming a good person. The fact that this made her easily the most selfless character in the comic doesn't seem to have changed her opinion of herself.
• Fantastic Four:
  • Weaponized by Reed Richards when Doctor Strange gives him a magic device that activates only when Reed admits there are things he doesn't know. For bonus points, Reed was fighting Doctor Doom, Marvel's all-time number-one egomaniac.
  • Villains rarely have this problem, but it has always been the Fatal Flaw for the Molecule Man. Despite having the potential to use powers that would make him a match for Galactus, his lack of confidence in his own abilities has long kept him from developing such potential. In fact, it is often what keeps him from making a complete Heel–Face Turn, always being a reluctant and insecure type when circumstances require him to aid the forces of Good.
• The Flash: Wally West, the third Flash, has this as one of his most defining traits, though it originally mixed with Inferiority Superiority Complex and Sad Clown. Underneath his bravado, he felt that he was just Barry Allen's replacement and put his beloved uncle on a pedestal he could never surpass, and when he did exactly that, he continued to hold himself to such an impossible standard it nearly killed him. As time has gone on, Wally has repeatedly demonstrated that he has a lot of deep-seated insecurities and is self-conscious about any time he doesn't save everyone, which is despite the fact he's The Ace of the speedsters and is more-or-less a cosmic powerhouse, who has personally saved reality many times. This got even worse after Flashpoint, The New 52, and DC Rebirth, which was just one long Trauma Conga Line for him.
• Legends of Baldur's Gate: Even though she has just defeated a dragon, Delina considers herself a failure because she didn't save Deniak (who had turned into the dragon) and the Cult he led isn't gone, and plans to leave the city. Her new allies convince her to stay.
• Spider-Man: Spider-Man has been milking this trope for decades, despite the fact that he's one of the most famous heroes in the Marvel Universe, an undoubted A-lister, and he's had numerous hot girlfriends over the years. On the other hand, his uncle is dead because of a crook Spidey had a chance to stop.^note Otto Octavius claims Peter has been subconsciously sabotaging himself all this time because of what happened to Uncle Ben. One of his hot girlfriends was killed by his arch-enemy, who also happened to be the father of his best friend. Spidey may be world-famous, but that's mostly from being painted as a menace by the media to the point where any action he takes leads to questions about his intentions. He's fought alongside many other heroes and finally joined the Avengers after a long career that often saw him rejected outright due to his outlaw status. Spider-Man's whole career has been a double-edged sword that makes his self-deprecation understandable and fairly realistic. Peter is a brilliant and powerful man, but he doesn't think he deserves to be treated like one.
• Superman:
  • Superman can fall into this at times. No matter how much good he does and regardless of how many times he's hailed in-universe and out as being one of the world's greatest superheroes, he is often far more preoccupied with the things he can't or doesn't do than the things he can or does. One of the fundamental aspects of his character is the consistent awareness that no matter how powerful he is, he can't be everywhere at once and he can't save everyone. This doesn't stop him from feeling guilty anyway—if he tries to protect a hundred, a thousand, or even a million lives from certain doom and manages to rescue all but one, it's almost certain that he will be far more regretful about that one life he failed than celebratory about the ones he saved.
    • Case in point: Superman played a pivotal role in defending Earth from Imperiex, thus saving the entire multiverse from total destruction; instead of celebrating this victory, he instead opts to add black to his costume's symbol as a way to honor the lives of those who died in the war—the people he was unable to help.
  • Post-Crisis Supergirl is one of the world's greatest and mightiest heroes, has saved the world several times, saved countless lives, helped hundreds of people, and been a full-fledged member of four super-teams. Now you try to convince her of this. She has a rather low self-esteem and regards herself as an immature, clueless child who is barely worthy of bearing the S-shield. In Good-Looking Corpse she leads a team of young heroes and she is shocked when they praise her cleverness and leadership skills.

Fan Works

Animorphs

• Eleutherophobia: Tom has a lot of self-loathing left over from his time as a Controller, which manifests itself as snarky remarks about how he was better that way.

Crossover

• The Bridge: Godzilla Junior has self-esteem issues due to his fear that, despite his heroic upbringing and his long career of protecting others, he's still just another monster. In moments of self-reflection, he seems to think that he's not meant for a peaceful life.
• Children of Time (Doctor Who & Sherlock Holmes): Beth Lestrade, in the three-part 1st season finale. She's thrust into life-or-death situations and manages not only to keep her head above the water but also to keep a gang of Victorian street kids safe. Her planning also leads to the rescue of Dr. Watson and her Heroic Suicide to the redemption of Sherlock Holmes. But throughout all this and after she comes Back from the Dead, she never once thinks of herself as anything more than "just a kid," and certainly not a hero. She gets upset when others insist that she is because she sees her actions as just doing what had to be done: ergo, anyone could do it; she just happened to be the one in the right place at the right time. The task falls to Sherlock to show her that she's worth the respect and love that he and others have for her.
• Infinity Train: Blossoming Trail (Infinity Train & Pokémon: The Series & Silent Hill): Chloe Cerise shows moments of feeling that she has no worth or that she's useless because she has little to no parental guidance or friends and how all her peers bully her into getting into Pokémon.
• SAPR (My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic & RWBY): Pyrrha develops an inferiority complex after seeing what Cinder can really do. She also repeatedly says that she's not a leader, even though she's of royal blood and people constantly look up to her. This turns out to be accurate when she's given the leadership of Team SAPR and then later that same day given command of Mistral's army during the Battle of Vale, and both times she turns out to be just as terrible a leader as she said she would be even when trying her hardest to live up to the burden she was given.
• Shadows over Meridian:
  • After being hit with a series of revelations in rapid succession (that Jade/Kage was innocent of serving Phobos and that "the Mage" was manipulating her), Elyon realizes just how much she's failed at being Queen, berating herself for it and becoming determined to do better.
  • Caroline Hart, despite being a skilled healer and potion-maker, feels she's inadequate in everything else when compared to her fellow Sky Hunters and utterly incapable of following her mother's footsteps as a supreme seamstress.

Danganronpa

• Extra Life: Chiaki's self-esteem is ruined after her past rashness helped cause The End of the World as We Know It. The experience left her questioning her judgment, putting herself down, and wanting to make amends while being terrified of messing up again.

The Fairly OddParents!

• Never Had a Friend Like Me: Amanda has a near-pathological belief that nobody would ever willingly invest any time and effort into her and that the best thing she could do was stay in the background and not do anything to bother anyone. Considering that she had no friends and her parents have spent years saying this to her face, it's understandable why this belief has been ingrained into her. Norm helps overcome this somewhat.

Fairy Tail

• Angel's Breath: Ryusuke beats the crap out of himself for losing to Delia the first time round, despite having already shown his heroics to some degree, and blames himself for the entire team's loss to the Devil's Rage faction, even going so far as a Heroic BSoD. Then, there is this:
  Delia: And here I thought you were one of the heroes, here to vanquish evil from the world.
  Ryusuke: You thought wrong.

Fusion Fic

• Fallout: Equestria (Fallout & My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic): Has a very egregious example in the protagonist, Littlepip. She narrates the story in first person. And that first person has some serious self-esteem issues. She constantly questions her own motivations and actions, and every time she slips she beats herself up so much you're debating between giving her a hug or a Get a Hold of Yourself, Woman!. Additionally, the story presents some very interesting examples of characters who have the potential to be heroes but became corrupted because they trusted their own judgment too much.
• Fallout: Equestria - Project Horizons: Blackjack takes Littlepip's issues to the point where she's motivated by nothing but sheer seething hatred of both herself and the Wasteland. And unlike Littlepip, she has attempted suicide multiple times.

Game of Thrones / A Song of Ice and Fire

• The King Nobody Wanted:
  • Zor Alexi of Sarnor (who is seeking aid in defending his city against Dothraki hordes) refuses to mislead even casual strangers about how little his Try to Fit That on a Business Card list of titles (Lord of the Silver Hall, Master of the Two Hundred Gates, Chanter of the Names of the Thirtyfold Thirty Gods, the Pearl Beyond Price, the Thread Which Does Not Diminish, Friend to the Supplicant, Staff to the Needy, He Who Is, First Lord of Saath, and High Prince of the Sarnor) means, as shown in a bitter speech to Lyanna after a friend gives him a flowery introduction. He is the lord and heir of nothing more than the last ragged remnant of a dying civilization, and makes no bones about it.
    Zor Alexi: You also left out that the Silver Hall has been stripped of silver and indeed, of much of the hall, that the Two Hundred Gates are down to a few dozen, and that while I chant the thirtyfold thirty names, neither I nor anyone else can tell you what three-quarters of them mean anymore. As for the rest, if I am beyond price, it is because I am worthless, if I do not diminish it because there is nothing left, if I am friend to the supplicant and staff to the needy it is insomuch as I support myself, and if I am First Lord of Saath and High Prince of the Sarnor, well, it is because I am slightly better off than any of my equally impressively-titled and extraordinarily impoverished fellows.
  • Belthus Byet is a Living Legend and implied Knight Errant who once performed a feat of heroism which inspired a song that Word of God describes as a medieval version of the western ballad "Big Iron". Belthus describes the song as "[a] silly thing about a deed of little note I performed once," and is embarrassed whenever anyone plays it in his presence.

Godzilla / King Kong / MonsterVerse

• Abraxas (Hrodvitnon): Both halves of Monster X have moments of this. Vivienne at times overplays her shortcomings when it comes to learning to master her and San's new powers, and she fears the consequences of her losing control; whilst San will mentally beat himself up senseless if he thinks that he's caused Vivienne serious psychological pain and therefore, in his mind, failed as her brother.

Hetalia: Axis Powers

• Gankona, Unnachgiebig, Unità: although Italy seems to be happy all the time, he really isn't like in canon. Hidden behind brilliant smiles are terrible anxiety and self-loathing.

How to Train Your Dragon

• Becoming Lífþrasir: Due to his history as a weak nobody, Hiccup has a hard time feeling pride when he is praised, whether it is by people who are satisfied by his smithing skills or when the Hooligan Tribe thank him for essentially saving them from the Red Death.
• A Thing of Vikings: Hiccup in spades. He still hasn't gotten used to the transition from being an awkward skinny teenage viking who couldn't kill a dragon to being the Hero of Berk. He is embarrassed when, in chapter 2, he is called upon to hear and approve a saga written about him. In chapter 51, he even tells his father he feels like a fake hero.

Kim Possible

• Vacation from the Norm: Ron and Shego call Kim out on her self-depreciation, reminding her that while Kim's parents, her brothers, and Shego and Ron may have mastered one or two disciplines each, Kim has mastered many. Yori goes a step further, suggesting that Kim's constantly saying that her skills are "no big" is in itself a form of arrogance. Considering that Kim had just mopped the floor with a pair of former Spetsnaz agents, Yori may have a point.

The Legend of Zelda

• FFS, I Believe in You: Link harbors considerable self-doubt, stemming from a number of past failures and miscalculations both canon (chiefly not being able to stop the Calamity and being the cause of the Master Sword's diminished state) and specific to the story which leads him to consider himself a fraud and not truly worthy of his role as the Hero.

The Loud House

• Power Chord: High School Musical: Luna has a severe case of this. She hates herself for everything. She hates that she is a metahuman and feels that it is a curse, she hates herself for her mother’s death and feels it was her fault when it wasn't, as well as has a lot of insecurities about her being a good enough person and her crush on Carol. In the end, she does manage to accept herself more and stop Luan but it is made clear that it hasn’t fully gone away.

My Hero Academia

• From Muddy Waters: Izuku is constantly putting himself down over his guilt and shame at being the son of All For One and having his Power Parasite Quirk. He feels that he's a Dirty Coward for using U.A. as a Human Shield against his father, despite doing his best to protect his classmates and nearly getting killed for it. He has nothing but disgust for his abilities, which were stolen from heroes his father murdered, and feels that he's a terrible person for using their Quirks.

My Little Pony

• The Apprentice, the Student, and the Charlatan: Nova Shine also has some serious self-esteem issues, stemming from years of being a neglected "Well Done, Son" Guy who was cheated out of a place in Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns. It's only after he becomes Luna's Night Apprentice and has Twilight Sparkle there to provide positive reinforcement that he starts to become a confident and assured young stallion.
• The Pieces Lie Where They Fell: Night Blade's self-hatred is tremendous, and it takes a lot to ultimately convince him that he is not a bad pony.
• The Stars Ascendant: Twilight apologizes to Celestia for saving Equestria incorrectly. Celestia feels guilty, both for inspiring Twilight’s guilt, as well as for underestimating Twilight and preventing her from doing what she would do naturally, namely calling upon her friends for help and advice, and confronting the problem head-on.
• The World is Filled with Monsters: Vermillion, despite his growing list of accomplishments both as a soldier and as a leader, harbors persistent doubts over his own worth and competence. He particularly tends to negatively compare himself to Canopy, his old commanding officer, and to question why Luna would have chosen a no-name former farmer to be her knight.

Neon Genesis Evangelion

• Advice and Trust: Much like in canon, Shinji has incredibly low self-esteem, although he gets better as the story progresses thanks to his relationship with Asuka. At one point, Tanaka tries to flirt with him by calling him a hero and it visibly makes him incredibly uncomfortable.

Pokémon

• Anachronism: Deconstructed. Sonia frequently delves into self-deprecation, especially around strangers. Although her body language may seem confident, her self-deprecation is due to veiled feelings of depression and inadequacy. It's implied she was eventually Driven to Suicide because her loved ones didn't see the signs in time.

Star Wars

• Patron of the Art of War: Sabine berates herself for caving in so easily to Thrawn’s demand upon the threat of losing her eyes. Thinking of how Kanan has been able to function with his sight loss makes her feel pathetic. Now she knows that she has a price after stating how Thrawn could never afford her. Without her eyes she can't do what she loves.

Steven Universe

• Guilt: Pearl doubts her combat skill... because she can't fight seven opponents at once. It's implied that her fear stems from some kind of wartime trauma.

Tales of Symphonia

• New Reality: Brittany has shades of this in an earlier chapter. Thinking herself as The Load, it took Character Development to change her mind about it.
  I knew I was fighting a losing battle by trying to compare with these people. I just wasn't cut out for this-I wasn't physically built for it, I wasn't experienced, I didn't know anything...I didn't even have my memory. I was useless, really.

Films — Animation

• My Little Pony: Equestria Girls has former Alpha Bitch and Ex-Big Bad Sunset Shimmer riddled with guilt over her actions in the first movie. Even though she pulls a Heel–Face Turn and becomes The Hero, Sunset still has a recurring flaw of being down on herself quite often despite defeating the forces of evil and becoming a genuinely better person.
  • My Little Pony: Equestria Girls – Rainbow Rocks: Fresh off the aforesaid Heel–Face Turn, Sunset's guilt leads to her not being as assertive as she should be, and questioning if she is even worth forgiving. There are a few times that Sunset says she understands why everyone dislikes her, and once says to Twilight she feels like everyone's waiting for her to cause a problem. Adagio Dazzle exploits this to keep Sunset quiet, giving Sunset a long list of insults that prey on her insecurities.
  • In My Little Pony: Equestria Girls – Friendship Games, Sunset still easily gets down on herself, blaming herself for the movie's conflict and negatively comparing herself to Princess Twilight. It takes some reassurance from the rest of the Rainbooms for Sunset to keep investigating the magical goings-on around Canterlot High School, as Sunset feels that the only reason magic exists in the human world, and thus all the problems that come with it, is because of her.
• In Raya and the Last Dragon, the titular "last dragon", Sisu, is regarded by humans as the dragon who saved them all from the Druun, but Sisu claims when asked about it that her siblings did most of the work; giving an analogy to Raya, she compares her role to the kid who handed in the group project after everyone else did the hard work.
• In Turning Red, when Mei is found in her room in her giant red panda form by her friends, she calls herself a freak and highlights the negative aspects of her panda form. She is cheered up by her friends but much later, after she attacks Tyler, she is again down on herself calling herself a monster.

Films — Live-Action

• This is a staple of most Superhero movies, where the hero suffers some (usually) public defeat that is both physical and spiritual. In fact, it is a major theme of The Dark Knight. Batman seems thoroughly disgusted with himself when Rachel dies and public opinion of him hits an all-time low. In a rare subversion, he embraces his low public relations score for the greater good.
• George Bailey from It's a Wonderful Life suffers this. Despite repeatedly sacrificing his own desires to help others, and doing enormous amounts of good in his hometown, he feels worthless because he's never done anything 'big'.
• In 9/11, on the day after the World Trade Center terrorist attacks, members of the FDNY from Engine 7/Tower Ladder 1/Battalion 1 speak about this as they dig through the rubble of the Twin Towers. Despite the literal tons of donated supplies, around-the-clock rescue efforts, and thousands of people cheering for the FDNY, the firefighters note they certainly don't feel like heroes after what happened. They were one of the few fire companies in New York City which had no one die during the attack, and felt that they had to work the hardest, partly out of Survivor Guilt. Although they do manage to find one person who was still alive in the wreckage, later narration implies that one living person was all they managed to find.
• In Return of the Jedi, when Luke and Han are reunited at Jabba's palace.
  Luke: You all right?
  Han: Fine. Together again, huh?
  Luke: Wouldn't miss it.
  Han: How are we doing?
  Luke: Same as always.
  Han: That bad, huh?
• Part of Schindler's Character Development in Schindler's List is that he starts as a materialistic, vapid factory owner and ends up selling most of his possessions to save his Jewish workers. When they rally together to give him a ring made of the little gold they have, Schindler breaks down, saying that there was always more that he could have done. They, along with his assistant Itzhak, convince him that even what he did was enough.

Literature

• A Most Unlikely Hero: Alex finds new and even ridiculous reasons for hating himself despite being an improbably good person who is solely motivated by doing the right thing.
• After the first book in The Bitterbynde Trilogy, the main character, Imrhien, runs into this trope, especially as other people tell her she's beautiful, and she can't comprehend it. Justified, as she spent the entire first book with a hideously deformed face, and was treated cruelly on account of it, and that, combined with her amnesia, formed her entire self-image.
• This is, naturally, big in Victorian literature. Perhaps the most extreme example is Esther, of Bleak House, queen of Dickens' saintly female protagonists. The novel is split between omniscient third-person narration and Esther's first-person view - and every second line of the woman's narration is pathological self-deprecation. As critics have pointed out, the extremity leaves an odd effect: since Dickens also requires the character to be a mouthpiece for Dickens' sharp, sometimes barbed, observations about characters, she comes across as passive-aggressive. It also makes her relationship with some of the other characters seem a little... unhealthy. For instance, she is not merely fond of her friend Ada, she is morbidly and self-abasingly obsessed with her. The most recent BBC adaptation gave Esther a complete personality rewrite to make her bearable to a modern audience: they endowed her with a sense of humour and replaced her hysterical self-loathing with a more likable mix of confidence and humbleness.
• Mundo Cani Dog of The Book of the Dun Cow is the most selfless, noble, and heroic character in the book, but he has terrible self-esteem, agrees with any insults, and doesn't even mind having his fur eaten by wild turkeys or being used as a doormat.
• Ciaphas Cain: The eponymous character is probably the only person in the Ciaphas Cain series who thinks that he is not worthy to be called a HERO OF THE IMPERIUM. There's a mixture of reasons for this: partly, it's because he knows that brushing away compliments about his mighty reputation will make him look heroic and modest to boot, partly that the vital contributions of his aide Jurgen are always overlooked and Cain gets all the credit, and partly because he really feels he doesn't deserve to be celebrated as such a hero when was he only ever trying to save his own skin (or so he says).
  • The series is, in-universe, edited by his comrade in arms, who added extensive annotations on when Cain's narration missed important details- or when she felt he was being too tough on himself. It's up to the reader to decide whose interpretation is correct, although Amberley Vail was not the kind to soften facts, and Cain's culture is very focused on martyrdom.
• Downplayed in "Clockpunk and the Vitalizer." Dolores does her best with what she has, but she feels she hasn’t done much good as a superhero so far. She gets better.
• Commander Samuel Vimes in Discworld has a very low opinion of his own intelligence, and has an inferiority complex with regards to the fact that he never had a formal education. Also, he hates the idea of having to be a Cowboy Cop in order to maintain the peace, because he firmly believes the law should always win over chaos. Once Vimes was actually given the post of Commander and the power to do something, he worked astonishingly fast to establish the authority of the Watch. It worked so thoroughly that when Vimes goes away to Uberwald, the crime rate actually drops in Ankh-Morpork because no one wants to feel Vimes' wrath when he returns. But in spite of everything he's done, Vimes still thinks of himself as a good cop that just got lucky.
• Dora Wilk Series has Witkacy, The Stoner who turned in his car keys and service weapon because he's confident that one day he'd kill somebody when high. That's all while Dora claims that even stoned, he's more intelligent than half of the officers on their station and she trusts him implicitly to watch her back when heading right into danger.
• The Dresden Files' eponymous protagonist is this... probably. Nearly every chapter in the story is narrated from his perspective, so we really can't tell. Other characters say that they believe he has deep, unwarranted self-esteem issues, but they aren't privy to Harry's inner thoughts, as he points out. He does many bad things in the books, as well as good things, and it's ultimately the reader's decision exactly where he falls on the antihero scale.
  Rashid: You don't need help, Dresden. You are the help.
  Harry: We're in trouble.
• The title character in Eden Green is bent on scientifically studying the alien symbiote infecting her friend — but never misses an opportunity to joke at her own expense, and confesses that she's unable to take herself seriously.
• Enola Holmes is like this in the beginning, having grown up with the usual Victorian Age denigration of women and thinks she's stupid and ugly. However, this is eventually averted when she realizes that she is good looking at least as part of her disguises and the simple fact that any 14-year-old girl who can keep one step ahead of her brother, Sherlock Holmes, and operate a successful Private Detective business at the same time is a bloody genius!
• Flashman acts this way when anyone is looking, though in his case it's an utterly cynical ploy to boost his reputation as an innocent-hearted hero. There is also an Alternate Character Interpretation that Flashman is genuinely brave ("heroic" is not a word that can be used of a self-confessed rapist, murderer, and slave-trader) but doesn't admit it to himself - if the definition of brave is "feel the fear and do it anyway" then Flashman is the poster child: he charged with the Light Brigade, fought on both sides of the US Civil War, took part in almost every major battle of the Indian Mutiny and stood beside Custer in his Last Stand... all while quaking in his boots with terror.
• Ann from the Gemma Doyle trilogy is not a fan of herself. This is to the point of self-harm.
• Harry Potter:
  • Harry himself feels no appreciation for any of his accomplishments, downplaying them whenever someone compliments him for them. This stems from having his legendary reputation being built on something he didn't do himself i.e. his mother's sacrifice that defeated Voldemort for the first time. When Ron and Hermione suggest Harry might make a good Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher due to his many run-ins with Voldemort, his Death Eaters, and other dark creatures, he refuses despite being the top of his class in the subject. He reasons that he only survived those experiences because he was lucky and that he has no extraordinary abilities at all. Dumbledore has to spend almost the entire sixth book convincing him he actually is extraordinary.
  • A big theme in Ron Weasley's Character Development is feeling inferior and unskilled in relation to Harry and Hermione, as well as his brothers, which more than once mixes with Driven by Envy. Ron feels that he's not really good at anything, and if he was, either his friends or his siblings could have done whatever he can but better. Reading between the lines, Ron's not an idiot, has a certain amount of intuition his two friends often lack, and he's a world-class chess player. The guy just never gives himself enough credit until character development kicks in, and it's during the Final Battle that Ron decides now really isn't the time to be down on himself.
  • Sirius apologizes to Remus for suspecting him of being the traitor, when in retrospect the actual traitor was more psychologically consistent to do so and admits that he and James used to be "the biggest bullies in the playground" in the third book, before the revelations of the fifth book. He also acknowledges to Harry that he and James behaved, "like arrogant berks" and that they ought to have listened to Remus more often than they did.
  • During what would be his last conversation with Harry, Dumbledore also shows a hefty amount of self-deprecation. He lays bare all of the mistakes of his youth, like the death of his sister that drove him to become the Big Good, explains that he never sought a government position because he didn't think he could be trusted with more power, and apologizes to Harry for manipulating him in the fight against Voldemort. Dumbledore admits that Harry is the better man and that everything would have gone smoother if Dumbledore had put more faith in him. Harry being Harry, he reassures Dumbledore that You Are Better Than You Think You Are.
• Honor Harrington has this on a full burner for most of the series, and, as Michelle Henke once pointed out, is constitutionally incapable of even wishing anything good for herself, if there's any chance that it would be at someone else's cost. In the long run, she gets enough self-appreciation beaten into her by her friends, but still always insists on Think Nothing of It despite any evidence to contrary. This fits with Honor's status as a Hornblower Expy. However, Honor's parents are some of the best doctors in existence, she has lots of contact with them, yet their concern for her self-image seems to be limited to her mother telling her she needs to get laid.
• Horatio Hornblower: The eponymous character is perhaps the Trope Codifier - he beats himself up over nearly every decision he makes - at one point, he even lies to his commanding officer, telling him that a fire on the French ship he was prisoner on had broken out spontaneously (he started it, naturally) in order to punish himself for an earlier error—which his commander had brushed off as unimportant. Despite being one of the finest naval commanders in the Royal Navy, he has a hard time imagining that anyone could really like him, let alone love him. This is entirely consistent with the way many actual people at his level of competence feel.
• The Husky and His White Cat Shizun: Erha He Ta De Bai Mao Shizun: Chu Wanning believes himself to be old, ugly, nasty, useless, and selfish. In the pov of others, he is incredibly beautiful, only in his late twenties and early thirties, highly moral and altruistic, and an unparalleled genius. His atrocious self-esteem is from being an Artificial Human and emotionally abused by his father figure, who originally planned on using Chu Wanning as a Human Sacrifice to make up for a tragedy caused by Huaizui's cowardice and selfishness.
• Nadreck of Palain VII, from the Lensman universe, is the epitome of this trope. He's just taken down three near-impregnable enemy battle fortresses by telepathically manipulating their crews into going insane and killing each other, but he tells his colleagues it's the worst performance he's ever put in since he was a child, solely because the three commanders survived and he was obliged to kill them himself. He almost resigns his commission when asked to divulge the details. Self-deprecation is a psychological trait of his entire species stretching back centuries, and it's documented in him when his character is first introduced, but he takes it to extremes here.
• Ivy Gamble of Magic for Liars is a skilled private investigator who spends the entire book playing other people like a fiddle. Her internal monologue pivots on how she lacks the magic everyone else was born with and how life would have been different if only she fit in.
• Lu, the protagonist of Murderess, suffers from this, even after heroically saving Hallwad and Aucasis from the Dark Ones’ tunnels.
• Lilac from Of Fear and Faith doesn't usually have good things to say about herself, not helped by the voice of her mother inside her head berating her constantly. Phenix and August are also very hard on themselves.
• Percy Jackson and the Olympians: Percy sways between this and Humble Hero, depending upon the quality of his mental state. It's particularly noticeable in The Mark of Athena, when, after numerous successful quests, life-saving, and world-saving at one point, he still feels he's misleading people by letting them think he's powerful or a good person. It's to the point of impostor syndrome, and may have a Watsonian explanation: the first book makes it painfully clear that Percy's stepfather's abuse and his birth father's abandonment caused his self-image to take a hit. Truth in Television, sadly-most abuse survivors are highly insecure and slow to trust anyone who compliments them or claims to love them.
• The eponymous character of President's Vampire, Cade, has spent over fourteen decades fighting for the good of mankind, saving countless people and probably saving the world once or twice, but he considers himself a demonic monstrosity that will go to Hell after somebody manages to kill him. It doesn't help that he's devotedly religious and a believer in predestination.
• The titular heroine of the fantasy novel Rhapsody (and its sequels) is a textbook example of this: despite being amazingly beautiful, powerful, intelligent, musically talented, and so on and so forth, she is constantly and loudly insisting that she's ugly and worthless and everyone must hate her and think she's a freak. It gets very obnoxious after a while.
  • Possibly something of a subversion than a straight use of the trope, as it is presented as something approaching an actual case of medical depression and her longest-running companion is, to put it mildly, somewhat less than impressed with her whinging.
• Over the course of The Scholomance trilogy; a number of people manage to see past Galadriel Higgins's not-so-vaguely hostile demeanor, magical talent for murder and mayhem, dearth of talent for all that much else, quite literal Aura of Menace, etc. to recognize her for the empathetic, courageous, and unselfish young woman she actually is. El herself is not among them, often brooding on how an aloof sense of universal balance saddled her saintly healer mum with a "Surly, Wrathful Death-Sorceress" of a child even after facing her worse fears to save hundreds from death and worse for no personal gain.
• A Series of Unfortunate Events: Lemony Snicket is frequently disparaging of himself; he has described himself as a coward, and at various points in his novels, comments that he would not have been as brave as the Baudelaire children had he been in their situation.
• In The Spirit Thief, despite being the most powerful of the three main characters and a good friend to both Josef and Eli, Nico believes herself to be next to useless and goes as far as to have suicidal thoughts from time to time. Being a demonseed does that to people.
• Star Wars Legends:
  • In the novelization of Revenge of the Sith by Matt Stover, the only person in the galaxy who doesn't believe Obi-Wan Kenobi is one of the greatest Jedi Masters of his time is Obi-Wan Kenobi.
  • Big Good Luke Skywalker went through this early on in his quest to restore the Jedi Order, as being the Last of His Kind with nobody but the dead to give him guidance resulted in him being plagued by doubts and insecurities even though Yoda recognized him as a full-fledged Knight. In The Truce at Bakura (taking place immediately after Return of the Jedi) Leia introduces him as the Grand Master of the Jedi Order, with him mentally adding on only by virtue of being the only one left (which she admonishes him for through Twin Telepathy). By the time of Dark Empire six years later he gains more confidence and declares himself a Master, only for his Fiery Redhead wife Mara to rip him a new one in Hand of Thrawn for presuming to declare himself "a Jedi Master with less than ten years on the job".
  • In Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor, Luke is so disgusted by his actions at the Battle of Mindor that he tries to have himself indicted for war crimes. It doesn't quite go as he wanted.
• In The Stormlight Archive:
  • Most Radiants display this to some extent. A necessary prerequisite for becoming a Radiant is psychological trauma, and Radiants have been gone so long tales of their exploits have become legends and their humanity forgotten; the new crop generally feel insufficient to the role.
  • Navani Kholin dismisses herself as a rich patron who occasionally gives ideas to real scholars, despite having spearheaded research on half a dozen artifabrial breakthroughs. This turns out to be partially a result of internalizing emotional abuse from her first husband, Gavilar, who mocked her efforts in the field while giving her no time to study it.
• By the end of Till We Have Faces, Queen Orual is so guilty that she's confused when she finds out her subjects are sad at the prospect of her death. Despite her failings as a sister and friend, it is clear she did great things for the nation of Glome and inspired the people.
• This is a recurring theme with Bella in The Twilight Saga, as she spends a good quarter of the first book alone lamenting how boring, clumsy, plain, useless, etc. she is in relation to Edward. He, on the other hand, does the same thing in the unfinished Midnight Sun manuscript, decrying his bloodlust, darkness, monstrosity, etc., and how he will never be good enough for Bella.
• Quentin Leah in The Voyage of the Jerle Shannara couldn't save Tamis or Ard Patrinell. This transforms him into a Failure Knight who goes to insane risks to protect his adoptive brother and the rest of his friends. Yet despite this, he never thinks it's enough, regards himself as a failure, and just wants it to all end.
• A feature of a number of protagonists in The Wheel of Time, particularly the characters from the wholesome backwoods of the Two Rivers, but especially for Gentle Giant Perrin Aybara: even after he's become a major leader in the events leading up to the End of the World, has commanded Men of Sherwood armies at the scale of tens of thousands of soldiers through many a Big Badass Battle Sequence, and earned the respect of nearly every person who serves under him (as well as former foes and skeptics), Perrin is painfully self-doubting and uncertain of his worthiness to have anyone follow him, and pines for a simpler life without anyone looking to him for orders. It is undoubtedly meant to make Perrin seem like a humble and unassuming hero with greatness thrust upon him, and he does come off as a genuinely likeable person, more or less, but by book 14 of the series (with more than a thousand pages dedicated to Perrin's chapters alone, all of which present him as a Reluctant Warrior badass, a paragon of virtue, and a capable leader who bends but never breaks under pressure), the Broken Record of his self-deprecation cycle gets a bit hard to swallow, especially after he becomes really good at being The Beastmaster and a Reality Warper-god of the Dream Land. The contrivance is laid on only a little less thick in the later books, but even then, his resolution and self-confidence take turns with huge bouts of It's All My Fault, particularly when it comes to his wife, who spends every other book as his Damsel in Distress.
• In The Witchlands:
  • Iseult is made of this trope. Despite saving everyone's life on countless occasions, she keeps on underestimating herself, thinking that she's unimportant and merely a small addition to the main treasure that is Safi. She keeps on thinking that her mother and her apprentice are both better Theadwitches, and Iseult is to be blamed for this. She doubts herself all the time and punishes herself in her head when she dares to dream about a better future for herself.
  • Vivia is a badass and a capable princess, yet she keeps on thinking that the person she's in love with doesn't deserve her and will never notice her in any way other than as a friend.

Live-Action TV

• Andor: It becomes clear that while Luthen is incredibly ruthless in his fight against the Empire, he also harbors an equal amount of self-hatred for himself as a result of him spending years shedding his morals and fighting the Empire with the same cruelty that they treat their subjects.
  Luthen: My anger, my ego, my unwillingness to yield, my eagerness to fight, they've set me on a path from which there's no escape. I yearned to be a savior against injustice without contemplating the cost and by the time I looked down, there was no longer any ground beneath my feet.
• Arrowverse:
  • Arrow: Oliver Queen hates himself on such a level that he's nearly been Driven to Suicide several times over the years. That being said, Oliver has had time to make peace with his faults and thus is significantly less self-destructive than Barry Allen.
  • The Flash (2014): Deconstructed. Barry's lack of self-worth is so great that it's obvious that he doesn't believe he deserves to be happy. That self-hatred is internalized and gradually builds over the course of the first three seasons of the show with the accompanying stress and tragedy. The final product is Season 3 Big Bad Savitar, a rogue time remnant of Future Barry who hates his past self so much that he's willing to recreate the biggest tragedy of his life (the premature death of Iris West, his One True Love) if it means he can still exist. Considering how Barry wastes little time in suggesting that he kill himself to end Savitar's existence, it is heavily implied that all that he has endured over the years has made him partially suicidal.
• Bridgerton: Kate Sharma spent (almost) all her life believing that she doesn't deserve love and happiness. Despite having sacrificed her own desires in order to make her family happy as she willingly took over her father's role (following his death) at a young age, she still feels it's never enough to be worthy of love. Until her stepmother reassures her and her reformed sister Edwina convinces her about her right to be happy.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer moves in and out of this trope. In Season Seven, she realized she had an inferiority complex about her superiority complex. She's very quick to think something is wrong with her whenever something suggests that this might be the case. Over the course of the TV show, Buffy prevents ten apocalypses and saves people from lesser threats on a regular basis.
• Jon Stewart apparently did this to his staff on The Daily Show. Stephen Colbert called him out on it during Stewart's final episode;
  Stephen Colbert: Here's the thing, Jon, you said to me and to many other people years ago never to thank you, because we owe you nothing, one of the few times I've known you to be dead wrong. We owe you...We are better at our jobs because we got to watch you do yours, and we are better people for having known you.
• Doctor Who:
  • "Amy's Choice" involves an enemy who insists on being called the "Dream Lord", with powers over dreams. Early on, the Doctor says "I know who you are. There's only one man in the universe who hates me that much." At the end of the episode, we find out that the Dream Lord was a manifestation of the negativity in the Doctor's subconscious.
  • "Vincent and the Doctor": Vincent van Gogh has a problem with putting himself down because everyone else in his time period puts him down as well.
  • In "Let's Kill Hitler", when the TARDIS voice interface takes on the image of the Doctor, he asks it to show him someone he likes instead.
  • The Eleventh Doctor practically runs on this trope. In "The God Complex", he delivers an Ironic Echo of something he'd said to Amy when she'd begun traveling with him, "I am just a madman with a box."
  • Overlapping with Never Trust a Trailer: In the trailer for the 50th anniversary special "The Day of the Doctor", we hear the War Doctor say "Great men are forged in fire. It is the privilege of lesser men to light the flame." In the episode proper, we realize that he's referring to himself as the lesser man, with his future selves being the great ones.
  • Season 8 has the Doctor asking "Am I a good man?" shortly after his regeneration; at the time, his companion Clara tells him that she doesn't know, but the fact that he's trying is enough for now. As the season draws to a close in "Death in Heaven", Missy (the Master reborn as a woman) has assembled an army of Cybermen from dead people and gives the Doctor a control bracelet so he can control them as the superior officer she believes he was meant to be. He rejects it, calling himself not a good man or a bad man, nor even an officer. He calls himself "an idiot" who just passes through and helps out.
• Game of Thrones: Jon Snow downplays his successes and never puts much stock into the reputation he's starting to develop.
• Many Kamen Riders don't see any worth in their existence, think that nothing changes if they die no matter how much may someone disagree with them and have pulled off suicidal attack(s) at some point of time. Psychological issues and most importantly PTSD are running rampant among them after all.
• Smallville's Clark Kent lives this trope on occasion.
  • Oliver Queen to a much greater extent; eventually it gets so bad that he attempts suicide.
• Stargate SG-1: In "Meridian", Oma Desala wants to help Daniel ascend, but he gets stuck on this trope. He blames himself for Sha're's death and Sarah's enslavement by Osiris and claims that nothing he's ever done has made any real difference. Daniel also insists that he doesn't deserve to ascend due to these failings, though he eventually comes around with the assurance that trying to be a good man is what matters.
• Captain Archer of Star Trek: Enterprise goes through a lot of this after returning from the Expanse, in which he stopped the Xindi from destroying Earth and foiled a plot by trans-dimensional aliens to conquer the galaxy. This is largely because he did a lot of things that violated his conscience, leaving him with a massive Guilt Complex.
• Supernatural's Dean Winchester falls into this trope but as the resident Chew Toy his friends and family tell him to quit whining. His brother Sam does, too, and just gets dismissed as whiny.
  • "One ex blood junkie, one dropout with six bucks to his name, and Mr. Comatose over there."
• Super Sentai:
  • Years of being put down has resulted in Kotoha, Shinken Yellow in Samurai Sentai Shinkenger, doing this to herself. When she's just absorbed into group efforts, it's no problem, especially since her job as a retainer to her lord requires loyalty and to do what needs to be done. But if ever there's time to reflect on her worth, or points when their leader wants her sole decision on some matter, I'm-not-worthy-for-this-isms are inevitable. As is usual with toku character faults though, she slowly begins growing out of this by the season's halfway point.
    • It actually proves to be useful in one instance, since it renders her impervious to a Monster of the Week who damages opponents by insulting them.
  • Zyuden Sentai Kyoryuger played this for laughs in #7. The Monster of the Week can create copies of people and attempts to drive a wedge between the team by having the copies insult the real ones. However, when Fake!Ian starts insulting Daigo, he completely agrees with all of it and asks Fake!Ian how he can become a better person, which is ultimately what reveals the MOTW's plot.
• Stefan from The Vampire Diaries fits this trope. As a vampire who thinks he's a monster, Stefan constantly doesn't believe that he is truly good because of all of his guilt due to his dark past.

Role-Playing Games

• Dino Attack RPG: Despite the team's high regard for Rex, he feels that he is undeserving of his great reputation and considers himself a Failure Hero. This became most apparent towards the end of the Final Battle, though this was compounded by his guilt over Amanda's death.
  Rex: "And what good am I? PBB, Aster Oid, Adventure... Amanda... even Trouble... they've all died because of me. Me. A so-called 'ropes expert' who can't do anything without endangering the lives of others and relying on Deus ex Machina to save the day if the Big Damn Heroes don't arrive in time. And in our darkest hour, when you need a hero the most, where was I? Giving in to the very madness and lust for death that Dr. Rex and Baron Typhonus live for. I failed you. I've failed you far too many times."

Theatre

• One of the main themes of Hamilton is that Hamilton is obsessed with his legacy and (at first) dreams of dying on the battlefield in a heroic moment of glory. When Washington tries to hire him as his "Right Hand Man" in the song of the same name, Hamilton nearly refuses, preferring to fight on the front lines, and as seen in "The Story of Tonight - Reprise", he'd still much rather be fighting instead of working for Washington, where he arguably is doing more positive work. His wife eventually tells him that simply being there for her and their unborn son would be enough, and in "Yorktown", he takes that advice to heart, marking the end of his Heroic Self Deprecation.
• In Macbeth, when Malcolm and Macduff are taking refuge in England, Malcolm fears that he would surpass Macbeth's tyranny with an insatiable appetite for women, a covetous nature that would seize the money and properties of his subjects, and that his vices would surpass those of Macbeth. This is actually a Secret Test of Character to inspire Macduff, who felt guilty about hastily leaving his wife and son behind to be murdered, and reminds Malcolm of the virtuous nature of Duncan and his mother.

Video Games

• Blazblue: No matter how many times characters point out his positive qualities or his strength, no matter how many times he saves the day, Ragna the Bloodedge is adamant that he's simply a murderous terrorist bastard who's out for revenge against the sadistic monster who ruined his life. When characters who truly know him say he's a decent guy and a hero, they're right... mostly, but he simply brushes it off. Over the course of three games, however, it has slowly started to sink in.
  • For a given value of Heroic, a lot of the cast exhibit this; Jin Kisaragi was the Student Council President and by all accounts a model student, and during his career has won awards and promotions aplenty in the name of his adopted family, but they and him find little value in them (only fighting Ragna, his older brother, seems to satisfy him). Litchi, in spite of all the good she's done as a doctor, can only see her failure to save her old colleague and the Guilt Complex that goes with it. Noel Vermilion has to put up with daily insults from the aforementioned Jin, her boss, to the extent that she's internalized that she's useless. Combine that with not being particularly gifted in school and having no memory of her past and she has absolutely no self-worth. It takes regular pep talks from Makoto and Tsubaki to keep her spirits up.
• Chicory: A Colorful Tale:
  • Pizza considers themself an unworthy inheritor of the brush, especially since they were merely a janitor that picked it up in a time of crisis. To where the Chapter 3 boss is a facsimile of Chicory giving Pizza a "The Reason You Suck" Speech based on their feelings of inadequacy next to Chicory, and the Chapter 4 boss is a mirror image based on their internalized self-doubts. It's this shared feeling of inadequacy that helps Pizza and Chicory to bond, and work together to properly restore the world's color.
  • As bad as Pizza can be about putting themself down, Chicory is even worse. The reason that Pizza is able to become the Wielder in the first place is because they picked up Chicory's brush after she left it outside her room, since she felt like she'd never be good enough for it. When Pizza first talks to her in the game, she openly admits that she's depressed and being down on herself. Even after she snaps out of this funk, Chicory still constantly puts herself down in spite of Pizza singing her praises all the time.
• In Creepy Castle Moth (who was the protagonist of Creepy Castle and was as competent as Butterfly in scenario 2) describe himself not as a hero but as a person who ended up with the responsibility to be one.
• When they finally shows up in Dragon Age: Inquisition, it's clear that Hawke's failures in Dragon Age II have done irreparable damage to their self-esteem. While Snarky!Hawke had done this before, it was always with a sense of humor. By this point, it's taken a much more serious turn. In their first meeting, Hawke honestly doesn't understand why the Inquisitor would even want their help.
• Final Fantasy:
  • Cecil Harvey from Final Fantasy IV spends half of the game hating himself for accidentally destroying a village of innocent bystanders (and doing other evil deeds as well). Even after his redemption, he still goes back to reminisce about it eventually.
  • Cloud Strife of Final Fantasy VII as well. He didn't so much 'put up an image' of stoicism as an attempt to adopt a different personality because he hated his own so much. He does this in the Kingdom Hearts series as well — more so in the second game, when Tifa is trying to cheer him up and encourage him to find his light, but Cloud essentially says, "Yeah, whatever...".
  • Vincent Valentine. While it turned out badly and was perhaps inadvisable, he sees his willingness to ignore his own feelings for the benefit of his love, Lucrecia, as his greatest mistake since he 'allowed' her to walk into danger. He takes all responsibility for it and sees the horrific mutilation of his body that followed as simply his just desserts. Even after helping save the world he looks down on himself as a monster and is still somewhat isolated from the team, despite maintaining contact with them over the phone.
  • Squall Leonhart, the hero of Final Fantasy VIII, acts like a stoic and a jerk in part to hide a constant struggle with crippling insecurity and a miserable self-image.
• Fire Emblem:
  • Gordin in the Archanea remakes, Shadow Dragon and New Mystery of the Emblem. Despite showing considerable talent as an archer, he doesn't seem to have much confidence in himself, which probably isn't helped by his introduction in Shadow Dragon, where he is Bound and Gagged by the enemy army in a Disguised Hostage Gambit. In New Mystery of the Emblem, this is explored further. His base conversations with the Avatar show that it's partly due to his appearance, as he believes he is too baby-faced to be taken seriously, and tries to change the way he talks and considers growing a beard to look more imposing.
  • Lowen the Cavalier from Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade is sweet, a great Team Chef, has great potential as a cavalier (and pretty good growths in-game, unless you count magic defense), and works damn hard to get the work done... but he's got crippling self-esteem problems and several supports with others (his boss Marcus, his mentor Harken and his potential girlfriend Rebecca) have him saying he's just a nuisance and a load in the group.
    • Wil turns out to suffer from this as well. He generally hides it well under his extroverted and cheery demeanor, but a few of his supports, mainly his one with Rath, show that he actually has a lot of self-doubt and has a tendency to compare himself unfavorably to others.
  • Wolt, Roy's best friend and milk-sibling from the prequel. He's a talented archer and Roy greatly values both his friendship and skill, but Wolt still sees himself as being weak and nothing but a hindrance to him. Like with Lowen, most of his Support Conversations revolve around other characters helping him to overcome his low self-esteem.
  • Cordelia from Fire Emblem: Awakening is skilled in many different fields, such as fighting, music, and smithing. Despite this, she keeps telling the other characters that she isn't a genius and tries to downplay her achievements. Justified in that her knight-sisters picking on her for being a prodigy made her feel ashamed of them, and she realizes too late they didn't mean any true harm by it.
  • Takumi in Fire Emblem Fates. This seems to be a recurring trait of archers in the series in general, and Takumi may be the most extreme example yet. In both the Birthright and Conquest routes, he is shown to have a severe inferiority complex. He believes that his archery skills are simply due to his special bow and actually seems to think that his family doesn't truly love him, and this is unfortunately used against him by antagonists in both routes. In Birthright, it makes him vulnerable to Iago's mind control, while in Conquest he becomes an easy target to possess.
  • Bernadetta and Marianne in Fire Emblem: Three Houses both have incredibly low self-esteem for their own reasons, and constantly talk themselves down. Bernadetta was the victim of severe abuse from her father, while Marianne struggles with the nature of her Crest and it's strongly hinted she's depressed. Played for Laughs in the case of Constance, who is quite prideful while in the shade, but when exposed to sunlight she puts both Bernadetta and Marianne to shame in terms of putting herself down.
  • Second prince Alcryst from Fire Emblem Engage, who pretty much is a princely version of Bernadetta. He's always constantly kicking himself down, feeling insignificant to anyone and anything around him.
• Of all places, this shows up in Katamari Forever through the RoboKing, who constantly compares himself unfavorably to the real King of All Cosmos and frets over the slightest mistake, real or imagined. (He's much better at damning with faint praise, though.)
• Rean Schwarzer from The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel depreciates himself almost constantly at the drop of the hat. He humbles himself despite being a skilled swordsman and constantly worries his friends about his self-sacrificing habits.
• In The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Prince Sidon considers himself "pushy and unreliable" despite being viewed so favorably by his people, and seemed to think how he asks Link for help at the Inogo bridge to be rudely forceful. He later apologizes for taking a moment to himself in front of Mipha's statue as he considers missing her so openly and looking to her for guidance to be a display of weakness on his part. He also seems surprised when his father praises him for his part in helping calm Vah Ruta.
• Mass Effect:
  • Miranda in the trilogy has pretty severe self-esteem issues along these lines; since she was designed from the ground up to be 'perfect', she's got trouble believing she actually earned any of her accomplishments. She believes the only things that are truly hers are her mistakes.
  • In Mass Effect 3, Shepard gets in on the act, questioning why everyone is putting their faith in him/her, even though by this point s/he is the biggest damn hero in the galaxy and according to the Leviathans, the greatest threat ever to have faced the Reapers...and the Reapers have been around for over a billion years and having successfully defeated anyone who has stood against them to conquer the galaxy roughly twenty thousand times.
• Metal Gear: Solid Snake is proud of his deeds and aware of his competence... but don't, ever call him a hero. You'll get a ten-minute lecture if you're lucky.
  • According to Snake, a hero does it because it's right, a soldier does it because he's ordered. He's very much the second, he thinks and refuses to let anyone (especially himself) forget it.
  • Between his PTSD and his survivor's guilt, Otacon can keep up with Snake in this regard any day. Ironically, both of them form an independent paramilitary organization dedicated to opposing Metal Gears in MGS4, where Snake is most likely to angst and insist he's not a hero.
• Vivian from Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door. Despite easily being the most powerful and the most versatile partner Mario had, she failed to develop much self-confidence until late in the game. She had a good reason, though; her sisters were bullies who always told her she was worthless (the biggest reason for her Heel–Face Turn).
• Arthur Morgan of Red Dead Redemption 2 never misses a chance to voice his self-loathing no matter how high or low his Honour is played. He constantly brushes off people whenever they compliment him or tell him how he's a good person and they like him, and he even calls himself an "ugly bastard" when he looks at himself in a mirror. Like we don't all know you're totally dreamy, Arthur.
• In Super Robot Wars V, Amuro Ray doesn't consider himself worthy of using his Newtype abilities to better mankind and lead the way to peace. Instead, he sees himself as nothing more than a soldier that just happens to have psychic powers. He tells Setsuna F. Seiei to follow his own path and to hopefully not end up like Char and himself. Later, Judau Ashta tells Amuro to stop being afraid, and his experience within a GN Particle Field causes him to hope once again.
• Rhys' self-loathing is expressed subtly in the final episode of Tales from the Borderlands; if you choose to have him tell Fiona that he has a crush on Sasha, he says that he likes her because she's everything he's not, and he includes "moral" as a quality that he doesn't think he has. This coming not too long after he and Fiona were made to recount the journey their team went on to try and open a vault, where Rhys, through a complicated series of events, was forced to destroy the space station Helios in order to keep Handsome Jack from rising to power again through wholesale genocide and robotization. While it falls and Rhys floats away in one of the escape pods, he slowly puts his head in his hands, realizing that he's killed almost everyone living and working there, amassing a body count totaling at least in the thousands. He did it to save countless people from being slaughtered and enslaved, but he still thinks it makes him a bad person. No wonder he was so irritable and guarded while he was telling his side of the story; he doesn't want to remember what led him to hate himself.
• Tales Series:
  • Colette Brunel from Tales of Symphonia. She's quick to dismiss problems regarding herself and insists on hiding her insecurities behind a smile, especially being the Chosen One. Her willingness to put others before herself leads to plenty of problems because she thinks her own aren't worth talking about. She gets better once the burden of having to save the world is lifted from her by Lloyd.
  • Tales of the Abyss has Luke. After his Heel Realization sets in and once he's done his Heroic BSoD, he spends the rest of the game like this, only fully recovering right at the final boss. Once the rest of the party gets over how he accidentally killed thousands due to his own selfishness (about a few hours after they are reunited), they keep telling him not to say such stupid things.
    • Asch gets pissed whenever Luke does put himself down. Then again, he gets annoyed by virtually everything, but the party, for once, thinks this is justified.
  • Tales of Vesperia practices this too, with Yuri, although it's much subtler. Mostly it's tied in with his inferiority complex when compared to Flynn, but later on, after he kills Ragou and Cumore, he starts to hate himself for being a criminal, too, and he also self-deprecates for letting Raven essentially abduct Estelle right out from under his nose.
• All three lead characters from Wild ARMs have this problem. Rudy is one of the nicest characters in the game and has saved countless lives as well as helped people wherever he can- but sees himself as a monster due to his ARM abilities. Jack being aggressive and sour is really a mask for his guilt over failing to protect Arctica from the demons. Cecilia is polite and pleasant but fears her royal status stops people from seeing her as a person and actually caring about her.
• If you go by how Corin Wickes of Zenless Zone Zero talks about herself, she's an extremely inexperienced, incompetent, and lackluster maid who can only promise she'll work hard and nothing else. Based on Victoria Housekeeping Co.'s customer feedback forms, however, she's one of the best employees they have, able to take on any task reliably and efficiently, working well with others, and being quite capable in combat, as well. About the only demerits she ever gets are because of her perpetual anxiety and gloominess creeping out clients.

Visual Novels

• Several people in Fate/stay night do not consider themselves successes despite their legacies.
  • Servant Saber considers her tenure as king to have been a big mistake and wants to use the Grail to make sure a more worthy person is made king in her stead despite her positive mythological portrayal. The land she lived in fell into civil war due to people finding her leadership too cold and her closest friends Guinevere and Lancelot were heavily involved in that.
  • There's also Archer, who thanks to his own actions has cursed himself into being a Counter Guardian, or a type of Heroic Spirit that prevents tragedies and potential apocalypses. He thought it would be a good thing and help him save more people in the long run, but that's not really how it works, which leads him to hate the job he does. Since he feels his ideal is now impossible and yet has to follow through on it anyway with no regard to his will, he wants to challenge his past self.
  • The protagonist, Shirou Emiya, despite doing nothing but sacrificing himself for others and working himself nearly to death whenever he can if he thinks it will make even one person happy, still despises himself just for the fact that he is alive. Due to him being the sole survivor of the great fire that occurred at the end of the previous Holy Grail War, he hates himself for being blessed with life while the thousands around him perished. This has caused him to be extremely mentally broken when it comes to happiness. The only time he can ever feel it is when he is making someone else happy, and his Guilt Complex forces him to think that no matter how much good he does, he will always come up short. This broken ideal of his is addressed in the Unlimited Blade Works and Heaven's Feel routes, as well as the Fate route to some extent.
• Lorence Lancaster in Silver Chaos is extremely strict with himself even if the others look up to him, and in his route, he doesn't want to confess to Might because he is convinced his love must be one-sided.
• The Fruit of Grisaia: In the past it became obvious at an early age that Michiru was not the brightest mind, something her father blamed on her tutors, as petty revenge, the tutors abused Michiru both mentally and physically, convincing her that she is utterly useless, which crippled her self-esteem for life. This mental issue and other events escalated the situation until she ended up locked up in a psychiatric ward. Where she realised that making an idiot out of herself makes people laugh. Now she acts like the Butt-Monkey and the Class Clown because she feels this is the only thing she is even remotely good at, making people laugh and bringing at least that much happiness in their life.
• In Dies Irae there is Kai Sakurai. While a kind and caring soul, he is also a bundle of horrific self-loathing due to being bound to the family's curse, viewing himself as rotten to the core. His twisted views of himself run so deep that he is distorting both his own body and the surrounding world with rot and decay.

Web Animation

• Chadam: When Sandy insists that Chadam has to save the day, he argues back that he's utterly useless.
• RWBY: Qrow regards his life as being cursed due to his misfortune Semblance. Seeing himself as a burden to friends and family because of the bad luck he brings to everyone around him, he tries to spend most of his time living and working alone. In Volume 6, he admits that the first person who ever saw past his curse and believed in him was Professor Ozpin. As a result, he threw himself fully into Ozpin's fight against Salem, believing he was finally doing some good in the world. When he realises what secrets Ozpin has been keeping, his self-esteem shatters; even though Ozpin tries to tell him he's doing good with his life, Qrow rejects the sentiment, as well as Ozpin, and spends the rest of Volume 6 in a state of drunken despair. Although he decides to give up alcohol in Volume 7, he's still uncomfortable with receiving any compliments about any positive influence he may have had on the lives of Ruby and her friends. In the end, Clover tells him that he needs to stop deflecting compliments and accept that he is capable of having a positive influence on others.

Webcomics

• A common ailment among Homestuck characters. Karkat has unresolved issues involving his blood type (for starters; the boy really has it in for himself/everyone around him); Dave has trouble judging himself by his own standards instead of comparing himself to others; and Sollux is a Mood-Swinger caught between depression and rage.
  Sollux: (to his girlfriend) iif you weren't 2o great iid thiink you were 2tupiid for liiking me.
  • Terezi, of all characters, has fallen into this too, and it seems to have taken a toll on her.
  • For years before the game even started, John would subconsciously scribble graffiti on his bedroom walls, all of it harshly insulting, all of it aimed at himself. He was unaware of this until Rose pointed it out to him. Now go back and read his dad's interactions with him again.
• Slightly Damned:
  • Kieri "Snowy" Suizhan has some SERIOUS mother issues, as a result of being reprimanded/abused by her Knight Templar mother for acing non-combat skills and having less than overkill combat performance. As a result, she's been heroic (and SKILLED) for the short bursts of time that she has been in fights or conflicts, but due to her suppressed anger issues, is utterly ruthless in combat, even becoming the first main character that we see in the comic to (intentionally) murder an enemy.
  • On the angst pie chart (approximate), 60% is for lack of confidence in her combat skills/growth in combat skills, 20% is for being merciful/diplomatic to demons, and 20% is for being a weirdo compared to other bloodthirsty warrior angels. She's the strongest member of Rhea's party, her diplomacy saved her life (and got her a boyfriend), and the other angels are xenophobic Nazis complete with willing obedience to superiors that they don't ever question.
• Tales of the Questor: Quentyn angsts about his first mission, even though it was barely successful. One of his teammates encourages him to realize that he chose to be out there, so that victory was his. Unfortunately, his first major screw-up REALLY sets things into motion: killing an elder dragon accidentally gave an ambitious dragon whelp a massive fortune, which the younger dragon celebrated by torching the local dukedom (they go into a frenzy and kill everything close to their lair after smelling dead dragon as a defense mechanism). The number of casualties is unknown, but it gives the duke a good excuse to declare war against Quentyn's allies. He angsts about that through hibernation. Luckily, some werewolves helped Quentyn realize that he can't expect perfection from a Questor, and neither can anyone else.
• In The Glass Scientists, Jekyll has self-loathing in spades, considering himself an awful person and his outward appearance nothing more than a deception. He's said to have gone through a serious case of depression before the start of the story.
• One-Punch Man: Saitama skirts this territory sometimes. Despite being (by far) the strongest being in the setting, he's depressed from what he considers a boring life, and he often despairs about everyday things like missing sales at his favorite stores. He's also very touchy about his lack of hair and embarrassing hero name (Caped Baldy).
• Sleepless Domain
  • Heartful Punch isn't afraid of calling herself out when she screws up. When she discovers she had been Innocently Insensitive to Undine by casually asking about her recently massacred Magical Girl team, HP fears she's become the "world's biggest asshole" to her. She calls herself a doofus for being slow to realize how the fog boosts Undine's water powers and confesses, when offering to unofficially team up with Undine, that her fighting alone may have just been a form of cowardice to avoid getting attached to others.
  • Undine has the more dramatic version of this trope. She's spent so much time on her original team playing support, that when she's left fighting alone she constantly disparages her own abilities, feels selfish for wanting to feel better after traumatic events early in the story, and constantly apologizes for things like venting her worries on Heartful Punch, despite HP's insistence that it's okay. Undine's tendency is such that when she tells of Heartful Punch for calling herself a coward, HP can only remark on the irony of such a statement coming from her.
• In El Goonish Shive, Elliot is more willing than anybody in the cast to defend others, but doesn't actually notice this himself. Instead, he worries that he does the right things for the wrong reasons. Perhaps most noticeable when Ellen (a day into her independent existence from Elliot) is surprised at everything he's willing to do for her since her initial perception of the inherited memories from him didn't paint him as being so selfless.

Web Original

• Mackenzie from Tales of MU abhors violence, to the point that she'd rather die or get raped than risk hurting her attacker. Her compassion, empathy, and acceptance are borderline Messianic. She abjectly refuses to believe she is anything but irredeemably evil, a result of her father being a demon and her caretaker being a demon hunter, and she has a shorter temper than Bruce Banner.
• Phase of the Whateley Universe does this a lot. But given that Phase is on a team with Tennyo, Fey, Lancer, Bladedancer, and Chaka, it's sort of realistic to think he's not Superman and Batman rolled into one. Also, in battles, Phase is afraid, and it doesn't seem like his teammates ever worry about that stuff.
  • However, Phase is in reality one of the most dangerous members of Team Kimba. He's incredibly smart, he rarely loses (and if he does, he goes back for a rematch armed with knowledge of how to beat his opponents), he has a utility belt packed full of holdouts useful for any situation, his disruption-light tactic can turn Exemplars into monsters, his knowledge of economics is so good that he's a multi-billionaire before he's sixteen, and his powers can get him through almost any fight.
• Iriana Estchell of Ilivais X flat-out hates everything about herself, and will usually counter a mushy compliment with self-insult.
• When The Nostalgia Critic is really stuck in depression, he can't stand to wear his usual suit. It's only when he manages to get out of it that he'll put it back on again.

Western Animation

• Even Batman falls into this in one episode of the Dini-Timm cartoon when Commissioner Gordon is wounded during a police bust. Batman bitterly reproaches himself for his failure, thinking he does more to help merchandise salesmen than the people who really need it. This trope is Lampshaded by Robin, who points out that Gordon is fully aware of the dangers of his job, and tries to remind Batman that Gotham would probably have fallen apart without him. Eventually, it's subverted when a disgusted Robin gives up trying to cheer up Batman and goes to the hospital to protect Gordon since the mobster they busted has escaped from prison and is probably going to pay the Commissioner a "visit". Subverted again when Batman snaps himself out of his depression and goes to the hospital himself. The mob boss tries to whack Gordon and runs into Batman...
• Bob's Burgers: As of recent seasons, Tina Belcher's lost some of her earlier confidence and gained more insecurities over her appearance, her interests and even her entire character. It's to the point where she tells Linda that she doesn't want to be herself and wishes she could be more like the cool teenagers despite the fact that Tina herself is just fine on her own and a much better person that most of the people she tries to be like.
• The Hollow: As Mira and Adam showcase their superhuman powers, the only trait Kai shows in special is a strangely large knowledge of STEM, as a result, he can't really be pointed to have "super powers" like his teammates, which is a blow to his self-esteem. He gets better once his pyrokinesis develops.
• Monkie Kid: MK is especially prone to this, as even while being chosen to be Monkey King's successor, he continually struggles to believe he's good enough to be so.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic examples:
  • Nearly saves Fluttershy from corruption in the season two premiere. Discord starts mocking her about how weak and useless she is, expecting her to get riled up and protest about how her kindness has done so much good... but instead, her self-esteem is so crappy she agrees with him wholeheartedly, and starts talking about how grateful she is to have friends who are willing to help her so much because she's good for so little, despite the fact that this is the pony who walked up to a raging manticore, made a dragon cry, and stared down a cockatrice that was turning her to stone at the time, among other things in season 1 alone. Just when it looks like she's off the hook, Discord loses his patience and corrupts her by sheer brute force.
  • Twilight Sparkle also has shades of this, particularly in "Boast Busters;" she's afraid of defeating a Small Name, Big Ego character in a magical contest simply because she doesn't want others to think she's showing off. This later comes into effect in "Lesson Zero," where Twilight begins mentally unhinging because she hasn't sent in her weekly friendship report and fears getting sent back to magic kindergarten, or possibly to the moon. Never mind all her positive findings before then.
  • Spike's reaction to praise from the Mane Six and Princess Cadence for saving every pony from the iceberg cloud in Equestria Games.
    Spike: I just saw what needed to be done and reacted. Just so happens I can breathe fire, and if any of you could do that, you'd have done the same.
• Kim Possible: according to the show's theme music, she's "just a basic average girl", and her general response to people thanking her for saving the day is "No big." Occasionally subverted (and frequently lampshaded) in that she sometimes tends to boast about her skills; her personal motto is "I can do anything", which is the slogan for her website.
  Ron: Sounds kinda braggy, KP.
  Kim: It's like advertising, Ron, it's supposed to be braggy.
• Danger Mouse goes back to prehistoric days to fetch Penfold using Professor Squawkencluck's time machine (which was how Penfold got there to start with):
  Professor: You are a hero!
  DM: (shrugging shoulders) It's just a job, really.
• Steven Universe:
  • Pearl suffers from this big time due to Homeworld's treatment of Pearls as a Servant Race. This inherently low self-image coupled with and informing her unhealthy devotion to Rose Quartz has led to some fairly self-destructive behavior, including tricking Garnet into fusing with her so she could experience Garnet's strength and stability. In "Friend Ship" she outright stated that because she's "just a Pearl", she doesn't have any inherent value and is only useful when someone gives her orders to follow. This is all in spite of being a master swordswoman, mechanical engineer, and having been Rose Quartz's second-in-command during the Rebellion. Thanks to Garnet's urging towards self-determination, she is getting better.
  • Steven Quartz Universe and Amethyst suffer from this as well. Steven doesn't think he's strong enough to replace his mother as leader of the team, and he suffers from massive guilt over his failure to help/reconcile with Jasper, Eyeball, and Bismuth. Amethyst, despite being the strongest non-fusion of the team, and being the one who loves Earth the most because it's her native home, believes she's inherently bad because she was made in the Earth Kindergarten to be a Homeworld soldier during the Rebellion, and only avoided that by hatching 500 years behind schedule. Smoky Quartz, as Steven and Amethyst's fusion, shares similar self-esteem issues due to not having any apparent special abilities like the other fusions beyond their yo-yo weapon (they haven't existed long enough to properly explore their powers).
  • As a result of her actions and mistakes caused by her ignorance and inability to completely learn from them, Rose Quartz is implied to have been heavily burdened by extremely low self-esteem. She feels not good enough for Homeworld because the Diamonds' abuse towards her former identity for her compassion towards lesser beings made her feel worthless. And then she tries to improve herself by colonizing Earth (which requires leaving behind her childhood, including her playmate Spinel), only to learn the Awful Truth behind the process, which adds to her self-loathing (and also implies that she regrets leaving Spinel behind but couldn't come back for her because she believes Spinel deserves better than her, unaware that she was still waiting for her). She tries to atone for her mistakes by fighting against the Authority to save her planet, even faking her own shattering, since she believed they loved her only as a Diamond and just to feel better about themselves, only to realize far too late they did love her as a person and responded to her "death" by Corrupting all remaining Gems on Earth, which she barely saved Garnet and Pearl from. She even feels not good enough for Earth and believes she doesn't deserve to be loved by her friends and family due to her failure to save the rest of them, blaming herself for the corrupted Gems.
• The trailer for the fifth season of Samurai Jack seems to show him as having sunk deep into this state, yet still able to claw his way out of it, something that seems to have repeated itself frequently over a fifty-year Time Skip.
• Xavier Riddle and the Secret Museum: Despite all of his accomplishments, Brad has a rather low opinion of himself, which is the subject of multiple episodes.
• She-Ra and the Princesses of Power: Adora does this a lot, despite her accomplishments. If something goes wrong, the poor girl is quick to blame herself, even if it's not her fault. It also gets to a point where she thinks she's useless, no matter what form she takes.

Real Life

• Geri Halliwell from The Spice Girls writes in her autobiography that when she had bulimia, she felt terribly guilty about wasting food when people are starving, so she spent a day (before she was famous) giving sandwiches to homeless people. She adds that she knew that her motives were purely selfish, and she was doing it because she felt the need to compensate for wasting food.

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